


Paperwork

by Ylevihs



Series: How Not to Fall [27]
Category: Fallen Hero: Rebirth (Video Game)
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, Mentions of Suicidal Thoughts, Retribution Spoilers, canon typical self esteem, mild injury reference, reference to a suicide note
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-01
Updated: 2019-09-01
Packaged: 2020-10-05 01:25:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,204
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20480663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ylevihs/pseuds/Ylevihs
Summary: Richard starts healing. A bit.





	Paperwork

Richard winced, tried not to bite down on his already too sore inner cheek, and fought the urge to fidget. He was back in his own home, at least, propped up in his own bed by what seemed like every pillow either Danny or him had ever owned.

There had been a short lived internal conflict when he’d first gotten back. A toss up choice between a) accepting the offer of low dose pain killers and b) letting himself enjoy the hard won consequences of his actions. He’d chosen the latter and Daniel hadn’t known if he should feel disappointed or not. He knew Richard was punishing himself. He also knew that Richard might try to numb more than the injuries.

Time had passed.

Days. Maybe a full week? The first one was spent in bed, unconscious. The next two days passed with slow grinding movements. Ah, four days, then. Because he’d figured out how to balance on his good leg long enough to accomplish something like a walk and had been fussing with cleaning the living room when Daniel had come home.

It had registered with Daniel far too quickly that Richard was going to push himself too hard and too fast and so he’d been ordered to bed rest as long as Daniel was also in the apartment.

Any awareness of the real passage of time was hazy and secondhand at best, like catching snippets of a biased news report from the next room. Whoever was in charge of the television kept pausing. And rewinding. Suddenly speeding up through what had seemed to be important bits. Dull back of the skull pain from his jaw slowed things. Made time crawl and turned minutes into hours. Gentle stabbing in his side made things warp back to as normal as he could get them. Richard’s hip had the unwelcome ability to turn three seconds into eternity while still making the world around him spin too quickly for words. He frequently felt like he was surfacing for air after having been diving too deep for too long. Dizzy and in danger of getting the bends.

So. Daniel had delivered Mitzi’s body to a hospital. To _the_ hospital. The one that Richard had picked out for her months ago. Where she wasn’t supposed to go yet, but that decision had been taking out of his hands. A hospital that would take a body without asking too many questions, even if it was Herald delivering her. She be taken care of there. Richard promised himself that if he lived to make sure of it, he would make sure of it.

A remarkably loud voice from the front of Richard’s brain started screaming. She was gone. Mitzi was gone and if anything happened now that it was over. His safety line had been cut and he felt the currents sweeping him away out to sea. The net to catch him if he fell too sharply or too quickly was gone. Nothing between him and the rapidly approaching pavement. Just Daniel and Ricardo and he didn’t deserve either of their help or their concern and he wouldn’t couldn’t blame them if they wizened up and let.

Out of the corner of his eye Richard saw Daniel float back into the room, rubbing absently at his hair with a towel. Hot water and soap and strawberry shampoo. Minty toothpaste.

Daniel had found the name of the hospital in Richard’s files. His plans.

The actual plans.

Most of the actual plans.

There were still courses of action that Richard couldn’t bring himself to put onto paper. Things that if he wrote them down would be too close to letting them taste reality. But the gist of it had been there. Lists of names and locations and dates. Maps and photos. Schematics. Floor plans, some pulled from the frigid depths of his memory and others gained from some very generous bribes to minor clerks at city hall. Which direction would be best to come from. Which building would be best to start with. What sort of weapons he might need. What to ask of Dr. Mortum, if he could get his help. Notes on how to properly apologize to the good doctor, which had raised some eyebrows when it was brought up next. 

What he did want to tell Ortega and Daniel. What he didn’t. (The blur that had sat on the edge of the cot when he drifted in and out of sleep in his lair had been particularly incensed about those.) And why he hadn’t wanted them to know what they now knew from snooping in his desk.

His notes on Regina and Senator Carmichael. (Danny’s thoughts kept going back to them and was it because he’d scratched out her face? Was he worried that Richard would? He darted too quickly for Richard to keep up with.) There was a brush of familiarity there.

And the other thing. 

Ortega had waited until Daniel came back from dropping off Mitzi’s body to leave.

That must have been, what, two in the morning then? Maybe closer to one.

He had fired up the engine and. Had left his motorcycle outside the entire time they were in there, hadn’t he? Where anyone could see. Less than ideal.

Something in Richard said that it could have been anyone’s bike. It couldn’t have been anyone else’s. Ortega had gone back to Rangers Headquarters to strip out of his skin suit and get looked at by one of their on-calls. Bruised ribs. Minor concussion. Bruised sternum. Low batteries that would sting and ache as they refilled. Daniel hadn’t joined him, which he’d had to explain when he did return his equipment later, but Richard couldn’t remember what excuse Daniel had given. He’d flown them both back to Richard’s apartment and settled Richard’s body into bed.

Now, three-ish days later, and Richard could move his arms without anything screaming at him and did so. Rolled his wrists to a sound like driving over gravel. Bent his elbows in and raised. Didn’t raise his shoulders. It was a temptation with how much the spot between his shoulder blades ached, but shifting them too much would jostle his ribs. Straightened his arms out and flexed his fingers.

Across the room, Daniel finished getting dressed for bed either oblivious or unbothered by Richard’s attention on him. Not oblivious. Accustomed. He turned and held Richard’s gaze for a brief moment before Richard felt something shift.

“How’re you feeling?” meaning the physical. The hips and ribs and the jaw. 

Daniel waited patiently for him to answer. Impatiently, actually, but doing a good job of pressing it back. Jostling those urges to the back of the line to wait their turn.

“Better,” Richard at least could be honest about that. His breathing was much better. Everything felt sore but it was tender hot pain of healing.

“Do you want to talk about it?” he asked, moving to hover at the foot of the bed.

“Not really,” Richard admitted sheepishly. Daniel both did and didn’t and the two desires rocked back and forth, buffeting his thoughts. Apprehension and fear and concern and there was that flicker of Senator Carmichael from earlier. When Richard had woken up in the cot and managed to quell the pain long enough it had been there. It was still there now. It felt different though and he couldn’t figure out why.

“Was Mitzi the last of…,” the last of the secrets Richard was keeping. “You still haven’t told me the name of the guy who designed the armor. Or the guy your notes all call your driver,” ah, that raised an interesting blip on both Danny and Ortega’s radars. Richard’s phone had about twelve missed texts from Ortega on that topic alone. They ranged from ‘you actually hired a chauffeur?’ to ‘how involved in your shit is this guy?’ The messages of the second sort had all been edged with green filigree.

“And you won’t get them,” he wanted to say it firmly and managed to sound only like a snotty child. “Those aren’t my names to give out,” Richard tacked on uselessly. It was true, though.

“They’ve earned it?” he drifted to his side of the bed and crossed his legs, floating above the bed linens out of habit. He bobbed gently about three inches off the comforter.

“Both of them, yeah,” a conversation they’d had before, in part at least. Same answers from each of them. Richard didn’t mind telling Daniel about Mortum or Bo, but their names were out of the question. He could at least do that for them.

“Fine,” hard and final. Fine. Not fine in the least. Not pressing but so tired and wanting to. His thoughts had circled back to the other thing. “But we. I have to,” he landed softly and looked his age. Looked too young for this to be on his shoulders. For Richard to be doing and keep doing this to him. “I read it. All of it,” had taken it too. Richard knew that it was folded primly and tucked into the bottom drawer of Daniel’s nightstand on his side of the bed. Four days and already the edges were worn from Daniel’s fingers.

Thoughts of it had risen to the surface of the flock every time he looked at Richard anymore and Richard had to let himself feel the sting of it. He deserved that, too.

The not quite a suicide note. A letter that had in plain and simple terms confessed his sins—yes, all of them, every transgression and every crime that he could think of—and explained his reasoning and. Nothing that Daniel didn’t already know. It was addressed to him, though. It apologized to him, frequently. And it had touched on, in length and detail, how much better his life was going to be once Richard was dead. _When had he?_

“Three weeks ago,” Richard mumbled, answering Daniel’s unspoken question. “Maybe three? Or four, I think,” Long before the marriage discussion. Before Daniel had forgiven him. If he had sat down and wrote that letter that evening it would have looked very different. It would have been more tear stained for one. Had it been before? No. Right around the time Daniel had decided that he wanted to see the armor up close. Right around the time Richard had begun to let his thoughts articulate just how terribly unhealthy he was for Daniel. For his life.

It was a conversation Daniel still wasn’t willing to have. Richard had foggy, discomfort laced memories of trying to bring it up over the past few days and being shut down by his boyfriend. The fact that Richard was about as good for him as a blood sucking parasite was apparently not a topic up for discussion. The more stomach turning thought that he’d somehow manipulated Daniel into ignoring his own safety was also apparently not on the table.

“I don’t,” understand. A half lie. He understood more than either of them were ready to admit just yet. It was easier to fib, though, and Richard let him. It had been a long enough time since Daniel had felt even remotely like that to earn him a little plausible deniability. “How much have you talked with Dr. Finch about it?” Daniel’s thoughts made an interesting swoop as he scolded himself that that wasn’t the sort of question he should be asking. Well. What sort of thing could he ask about, if not even that? Ah. If he should encourage Richard to tell Dr. Finch that he’d gone through the lengths of writing a suicide note at all. 

Richard let the wince show. “Not as much as I should have been,” he said honestly. He’d pushed the doctor’s thoughts away from the topic as much as he could without interfering with her other thoughts. She knew he was suicidal but somehow it always got shelved for more pressing topics. Saved for the next session. And the session after that. And the session after. “Always feels like there’s something else we have to work on,”

“Is it. Is it still really bad?” pain in every consonant. Concern in the vowels. “I mean. Not long ago you said it was…that you thought you were getting better,”

How to answer that? What did _really bad_ even mean? Or getting better? He didn’t spend every night thinking about it anymore, an improvement he would have bet money on a year ago would never happen. Didn’t have as many of those putrid little thoughts wriggling through the cracks in the floorboards to whisper about. Well. About. Tightening around his neck and the hard swallow and the blackness in the corners of his eyes as the oxygen ran out.

Richard felt his throat try to constrict around the words. “Not as bad as it was,” not a lie, which Richard still didn’t know what to do with. He didn’t want to think about it, in case closer examination revealed something he wasn’t ready to see. Pulled back a curtain. He had good days now. And it was hard to keep his footing with the realization that he was having almost more good days than bad, getting his ass kicked notwithstanding, and hadn’t even realized the change. That most of his mornings had been at reasonable times to join Daniel for a workout and breakfast. He spent more of his evenings in some Tetris block configuration of limbs on the couch, him watching shitty reality tv while Daniel sketched. He hadn’t had anything stronger than a single beer in.

Ice was melting in the harbor. Enough for the sounds of dangerously cold water to make its way into his head.

Daniel’s thoughts bumped against his own. “I’ll talk with Finch about it the next time I see her,” Richard surprised himself with how steady his voice sounded.

“Good,” relief, tempered but still refreshing to feel. “I got you an appointment with a physical therapist,”

Aw, beans. 

-

At least it didn’t smell like a hospital.

Richard scribbled easy lies onto the packet and shifted the clipboard on his knees. He’d been in a minor traffic collision, hit and run, bike vs sedan. About a week ago. Didn’t have a primary care doctor, didn’t go to a hospital. Didn’t have insurance. The check in girl’s face had fallen slightly when he’d said so and then lifted considerably when he said he didn’t mind being cash pay. He made up a birthday. Left the SSN line blank. Gave them the number to a burner phone that no longer existed. 

Stuttered at the past injuries and surgeries line.

Wrote down ‘pelvic surgery’ 2013 or 14? He couldn’t remember which year. It wanted to know which hospital. Which surgeons. Which. Those lines received: don’t remembers. ‘Back surgery’ got the same treatment. When had heartbreak happened? 13 right?

No known drug allergies. No current medications. Denied smoking. And drinking. And had almost managed to lift himself out of the stiff backed chair to give his paperwork back when the front door chimed open and the receptionist smiled broadly. He sat back down.

“Good afternoon Angela! Benny’s just finishing up with her last appointment and should be with you in about ten minutes,” chipper, but in a less robotic way than Richard was expecting. The woman’s thoughts felt like familiarity.

“Thanks Gina,” Lady Argent nodded once and then focused in like a laser on Richard. “Jeeze. You look like something the cat threw up,” but it wasn’t cruel sounding. The corner of her mouth was lifted in. A half sneer? Small smile? It was hard to read the expression with so many reflections. To Richard’s mild surprise she chose the seat next to him and dropped easily into it. She was wearing soft pastel workout clothes and beaten in gym shoes. He’d gone back to an older outfit for this, baggy sweatpants and thin, long sleeved shirt. 

“I know,” he’d caught more of a glimpse than he wanted to of himself in her skin. Deep purple bruises going yellow at the edges. Well. Yellower. She waited, eyebrows lifting. And when he didn’t immediately continue rolled her hand in a ‘go on, idiot’ motion. “Got hit by a car a few days ago,”

“What?” Argent snorted. “Wait seriously? Aren’t you supposed to be all,” she waved at her own head dismissively, the her skin rebounding the lights off itself. “Dodge, dodge, saw it coming from a mile away? Herald won’t shut up about it,”

“Supposed to be,” Richard agreed and went back to trying to leverage himself out of the chair and onto his good leg. Lady Argent watched him passively, letting him limp over and turn in the clipboard without saying a word. Richard forced back the wince and gasp as he lowered himself onto the chair again. He took a moment to collect himself against the ache. Argent let him. “But you know, I’m really not joking when I say I’m retired. I’m not as good as I used to be,”

“And you weren’t all that good to begin with,” it was meant to be a joke, he could feel it. Argent crossed her legs and reclined slightly back into the chair, settling in. This was a regular thing rather than an as needed one. It was where he’d watched her to get a feel for her rhythm before he’d taken over her body all those months ago.

“You’re not wrong,” he offered back blankly. Something interesting happened with her face that he couldn’t quite place. It looked vaguely like she was chewing her words for the feel of them before sending them out in the world.

“If it was only a few days ago and you’re already here, it must not have been that bad,” her brow was a little dipped, if he was reading that correctly. Nothing accusatory. Or confused. Just. Asking a question.

“Not bad at all,” Richard returned, not sure if he meant it to be sarcastic or not. “Popped a lung and dislocated my hip but,” he resisted the urge to shrug. “Could’ve been a lot worse,” and for a second Richard was sure she was going to say. No. Didn’t matter, because what she did say was equally surprising.

“Herald pick this place out for you?”

Richard felt his face lift in surprise. “Um. Yeah?”

“Figures. I made the mistake of telling him where I went once and he hasn’t ever forgotten about it,” she paused for a second. “Anyway, if anyone asks you don’t know me,”

“I _don’t_ know you,” Richard pointed out.

“Damn straight,” and that was a smile, sharp at the edges. It shrunk a few teeth after a moment. “As annoying as it is that Herald chose this place, they do a good job here,” it. Hm. Not gently but.

“Good to know,” he said. Argent nodded and made eye contact with a middle aged woman opening the door back to the rest of the building. It must have been Benny by the way the woman and Argent traded nods. She rose to her feet and very nearly seemed to hesitate. “See you around, stranger,”

“Stop playing in traffic,”

**Author's Note:**

> *ignores this so i can do other things*


End file.
